Eliot Orr, 26, `Always Said Right Thing'

OBITUARIES

When his older brother died in 1992, Eliot Jerard Orr held his mother's hand tightly and tried desperately to console her.

"Mom," he said gently, "some people are born to die young, and some live a little longer."

Mr. Orr died early Sunday morning in a car accident in Atlanta. He was 26.

"He could always wax philosophical," said his mother, Dorothy Orr, executive assistant to Broward County Schools Superintendent Frank Petruzielo. "He would say the right thing at the right time and I depended on it. He held my hand through all that and now he's gone, too."

The son would be his mother's strong shoulder once again when his father died last February of diabetes, the same illness that took his brother.

Mr. Orr, a 1987 graduate of Nova High School, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in business from the University of Miami, had recently started his own recording business with friends. His dream was to have his own record label for rhythm and blues music, said his childhood friend, McKinley Williams II.

"He was a hard worker and whatever he put his mind to, he accomplished," Williams said. "When he said he was going to try out for the University of Miami football team, people laughed. But he went down there and walked on and made the team. He never started, but he made the team. That's what he was like."

Besides his mother, Mr. Orr is survived by his brother, Kevyn Duane Orr, of Washington, D.C., and Kendra Orr of Fort Lauderdale.